I am a doctor, who over the past 20 years has practiced clinical psychology in Georgetown, as well as serving as a professor, author (represented by Dupree/Miller), & commentator on CNN, the BBC & NBC News. Also, as a graduate of Georgetown Law, I comment, teach, lecture & expert witness on issues that bear on both psychology & law.

Head of State focuses on the psychology of politics, politicians, & the media that surrounds them.

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

In a town where sexual indiscretions are the equivalent of shark attacks in Amity Island--everyone knows that there are sharks just offshore, but, again and again, somehow cannot prevent themselves from straying back onto the beach and letting their legs dangle below the surface in murky waters--we are now fully immersed the sequel to Weiner 1: The Selfie.

It is bigger, longer and seems unlikely to be uncut by a timeline of apologies and declarations of fidelity.

Rather, Weiner 2 has exploded with a sweeping chaotic storm of indignation and innuendo; shoes being fetishized while others drop loudly to the public stage; sadly ridiculous, hopefully dubious aliases and alchemical attempts to transform utter dissimulation into demonstrations of forthright, bona fide "I told you there was more" candor; pristinely contrite photo spreads in the prevailing organs of public mythology that are concurrent with the blurred avatars and awkward, unkempt, libidinous bravado, discovered in the far corners of early morning chat rooms, powerfully absorbed by the suctioning vortex of gossip's rising stars and then blasted across the national landscape, raining fragments of "hard deletes", previous "public rehabilitations", and "health care rants" that "were a huge turn on" across the ground.

Bar the doors and put plywood on the windows:

We are officially in the Weinernado.

We feed on such scandals almost as avidly, and with greater freedom and schadenfreude, as those in political life self-denyingly leap into the narcissistic gratifying waters despite the signs, marked along the shore, fading back into history, that such swims tend to end with brutal evisceration accompanied by opening-weekend record box-office.

But as we feed, on popcorn, prurient interest and snark, our basic trust in those who are intended to act in our best interests is also, once again. undermined, as we again decide that, regardless of the side of the aisle or the nature of the facade, self-interest and self-deception will ultimately and relentlessly define the political character.

Despite this, over days, years, millennia, the political characters themselves remain touchingly, hopelessly blind, as we watch them with the disbelief of obvious expectation from the shore--"For god's sake, anyone can see the risk--and you think it's time for another swim?"-- until the latest voracious whirlwind reliably sweeps in, twisting them mercilessly, and once again drawing them under.

In all seriousness.

The blind spots that result in these inescapable, seemingly compulsory political cyclones are clear, and should be posted, prioritized by degree of hubis, on the inner office door of every political aspirant:

You cannot claim to aspire to an office that will require you to adhere, as a fundamental characteristic central to your service, to a public trust, while at the same time demonstrating that in your statements to the public you are fundamentally untrustworthy.

You cannot portray yourself as one who, in the face of the inevitable enticements of office, will strive to act in the public interest, when you repeatedly demonstrate that, faced with the conflict between desire and duty, you will repeatedly, fulsomely, compulsively act in your own interest while telling the public otherwise.

You cannot pretend that your aspirations to service somehow cancel out your deceptions, as that equation tends to shift along the continuum of self-service towards ultimate conclusions that such deceptions do not actually matter--they become, easy, habitual, dominant, part of the fabric of not merely of private, but of public thought and behavior, until absolute deception has corrupted absolutely.

Foremost, you need to know the primary reasons why you actually aspire to high office. No amount of self-deceiving examples of rectitude, of self-justifying supposed high minded behavior can remove this primary intent on either side of the aisle. And no amount of self-serving denial that it will somehow be different for you is worth endangering the public trust.

It's best that you know this.

And actually deal with the factors, desires, and behaviors that you so avidly hide from yourself and others.

Before you run for office, and these actual motivations begin to rain down upon your life, and upon the public trust, and you are pulled, like so many before you, into the eternal swirling vortex that you, like they, somehow believed that your singular, impervious self could somehow avoid.